ISpheres is a digital repository system that is designed to stand on its own or act as a front-end to existing databases. It aims to provide a standard interface to repositories of images, sound, video, and other types of data.
To manage standard repository tasks such as storage, searching, and transforming the objects, iSpheres uses the server application iSpheresCore. iSpheresCore acts as an abstraction layer to the underlying databases, and provides a web services API for interacting with data.
The iSpheres web services API allows front-end applications to be built focusing on the interface, rather than on the core of the system. This allows developers to create a range of front-ends that better match the needs of the user communities, rather than shoehorning users into a one-size-fits-all system.
iSpheres are not limited to searching their own local repositories - the search system allows a search to be run across multiple iSpheres with no extra effort by the user.
Different collections of objects are best described in different ways. For example, a medical image database needs to have each image described by the anatomical features shown and the pathological conditions displayed, whereas a music database could be described by the composer and performer of each piece. This discipline-specific metadata is important for properly describing a collection of objects in order to make it searchable.
iSpheres is designed to allow each collection to have its own metadata schema so that the collection can be searched in a natural way by general users as well as specialists in the field. iSphere also provides a standard mechanism to translate the customised metadata into standard formats such as METS or Dublin Core.
Images need to be resized, cropped; videos need to be time-sliced and resized; all Digital Objects need to be able to be converted from one format to another. iSpheres aims to build this functionality into repositories so that users can upload their objects in the highest-quality format, and the system will automatically handle the translation to more web- and presentation-friendly formats.
iSpheres is built with a flexible backend connector architecture, so that it can serve files and their metadata, whether it is stored in a filesystem, a database, or in another repository system. This allows the re-use of front-end interfaces across different data stores, and integration of the search across a range of collections.
The iSpheresCore is accessed via a SOAP web services API, enabling digital object collections to be accessed from a range of front-end web applicationss, as well as integrated into Learning Management Systems and other pre-existing applications.